I’d like to introduce “Comrade Krieger,” a soldier who was deployed into Ukraine in the early days of the special operation. Comrade Krieger is, quite obviously, a nom de guerre of this young man. I spoke to him to get his account of what went down during the push to Kiev. He is currently not deployed and filling up on shashlik and Vitamin D at his dacha. Like many of the young men who actually serve Russia, he does not hail from a big city and his attitudes and beliefs are fairly consistent with what you would expect from young patriotic Russians in the hinterland. I’ve broken up his story into parts, and I’ve tweaked it here and there to make the story flow, while trying to translate the Russian tone as much as the actual Russian words used. Comrade Krieger is an unapologetic Russian nationalist patriot.

My name is Comrade Krieger, and I serve in the National Guard, the internal army as it were, and my story begins on the 12th February in Russia, when I was called up to take part in a military training exercise. These are fairly standard practice, and most of the time we get together to brush up on old skills and learn a few new tricks as well.

This time around, we spent our days learning how to set up field camps, doing routine ammo checks, cleaning our kits, “yes sir, no sir.” go over there and fetch that and come back — just getting into the rhythm of regular army life and that sort of thing.

But then, suddenly, we were told to load up the vehicles and to move out. Where to? We didn’t know, but we took it all in stride.

As we were driving along, we couldn’t help but notice that we’d crossed the border into Belarus. There was no checkpoint or anything, it was as smooth and easy as pulling into a parking lot, really. It was my first time in Belarus, and even if we hadn’t seen the sign, we certainly noticed that the weather was warmer, and everything was generally better maintained and cleaner.

At this point, no one had told us where we were going, but we had started to suspect that this wouldn’t be a routine drill when they started handing out real ammo. We stopped in a field somewhere in Belarus, near a large forest and set up camp. The OMON guys and the Chechens had already started fires and we followed suit, getting as comfy as we could. Our commander dropped a hint that things were about to get very interesting.

Night came and we finally got confirmation that at 5am the next day we were heading into Ukraine and that at 8pm we’d be in Kiev. We tried to sleep as best we could, but you know how that goes. Anyways, morning came and we got into our vehicles and rolled out.

We were supposed to cross some pontoon bridge along the border with Belarus and Ukraine, but it turned out that it was blown up before we got there, so we returned to camp and spent the day there. The next day, another attempt was made to cross a river, possibly the same one. We got into our vehicles as usual, but turned back halfway — the bridge had been blown up again. When we returned to camp, we were amused more than we were disgruntled or anything like that. Finally, the decision was made that we would simply cross at another point, across the land border. We re-entered our vehicles and set out and got about 100 kilometers behind us before we had a blowout.

We fixed the wheel soon enough and, finally, after many false starts, started our adventure in Ukraine.

I sat in the back and watched from the back window, where I saw a shot-up and abandoned car — one of ours — come into view. It turns out that the advance column had gotten hit by sniper fire and the driver of the vehicle had been killed. Shortly after, our commander decided to play it safe and told us to close up the windows. The car started getting incredibly hot and we started sweating and cooking in our seats. To make matters worse, because of all the false starts, we were now running low on water.

It was an armored car, by the way. I had trained in the Urals before, but this was a newer version – an Ural VV, 2019 model.

Soon after, our commander relented and the windows reopened just in time for us to see the first villages and towns, some which were on fire and a smattering of corpses along the road.

“How are you feeling?” I asked my friend sitting next to me.

“I’m a bit shook,” he replied. “And you?”

“Me, I’m not. I’m excited,” I replied and gave him a grin.

We pulled over to let some columns pass ahead of us because, technically, we weren’t supposed to be on the front lines. After all, we were just the National Guard. The rules of this special operation were a bit unclear, and no one seemed to understand how exactly this whole thing was supposed to work out. But that didn’t bother us much.

We ended up camping in the field for a few days where we had pulled over to let the column pass.

We found some water at a well, which was a relief and shared rumors that had passed up from the front from the people who had gone on ahead. The column that we had just seen had gotten shot up by 40mm guns (АГС) and those were the first losses from our side that I personally heard about.

We weren’t far from a village and as we began to dig in, we were given more equipment. I was given a sniper rifle and told to do my best with it.

I should probably say a few words about my kit at this point. I had a ВСС Винторез (VSS Vintorez):

And a СВД (Dragunov sniper rifle):

Also, I had a standard Ярыгина (MP-443 Grach):

I decided to get my sleeping bag and put it on the BTR as a cushion so that I could be comfy while also perched at a higher vantage point. But just as I finished setting up, the commander told us that we have to move out, and that people in black were seen nearby. The problem with this information was that we didn’t know what to make of it. See, our OMON guys also wear black. So no one knew who it was and the commander, after some deliberation, ordered a few of us to go out and to ask them, “hello, who are you?”

Our lads jogged off in the direction that the commander had indicated and then came hurrying back.

It wasn’t OMON. And it turns out that the Ukrainians had been sitting on the other side of the same village where we had made camp since we arrived — we simply hadn’t noticed one another. Both sides began firing at each other soon after. I ran to the BTR and got up on the side to get a view of the forest and the clearing. I couldn’t see anything, but the shooting continued. Eventually, I had to hop off as the BTR rolled out to take some shots at the men in black from the other side of the village.

I quickly realized that I had a slight problem to deal with. See, we had these regular, standard-issue helmets and I had a sniper rifle. That meant I couldn’t use the optics while wearing it because the visor got in the way. So, naturally, I took my helmet off and lowered my eye to the scope. My sergeant, who was running by my position saw this and ordered me to put my helmet back on immediately. I told him, “yes, sir,” but as soon as he had finished dressing me down I took it off again, and propped my gun on it.

Almost as soon as the shooting started, it came to a stop though. It was unclear what had happened, but new orders came through. We were told to move on to a new village, so we packed up and rolled out again. This time around, as soon as we reached the village, we began knocking on doors and asking the locals if they saw any soldiers in their village or nearby. They said no, and we left it at that. We didn’t bully or harass them in any way. Soon after, we left again.

Next, we rolled into a small town still further south. We were running low on supplies and so we went looking in the stores, but found that they were already thoroughly looted. There were no products left except frozen mush in the freezers that had spoiled. The town had lost its electricity and gas and the people were suffering from this worse than we were. Luckily, we found some potatoes and pickles and ate our fill.

We didn’t stay in the town and moved back into the fields. While we were setting up a camp, news filtered in that the forward columns had moved away to a different sector and that we were the only ones left in the area. To make matters worse, we were told that a counterattack was coming. We asked many questions, but got even fewer answers. One thing we did learn was that the counterattack was expected that night. So we dug in as fast as we could, and did the best we could with our defenses. Evening came and we sat in our foxholes and near our vehicles with our weapons ready, stressed out, sure that the fighting would start soon. Every second felt like the moment when the war would finally begin for us.

But we heard only silence and the regular noises of the field as the night dragged on.

Finally, the order was given to go check out what was going on in the forest near our position from which we expected the counter-attack to come and we rose to make our patrol. Just as we did so, the locals in the village about 300 meters away from us decided to launch some fireworks. We thought it was a signal to commence an attack and we rushed back to our positions and gripped our weapons tightly.

But nothing came.

We started to relax ever so slightly until we noticed a red glow coming from the village. “This is it,” I thought to myself and sweated some more. But it turned out that a fire had started in someone’s house. Possibly from the fireworks.

Another false start.

Some of the soldiers began to nod off, but then an explosion ripped through the night and we jolted back to readiness. “This time for sure,” I thought. But we got word that a boiler in that same village had exploded.

So again, nothing.

Night passed into morning and no counter-attack came. We sat in our positions, blinking and yawning and waited impatiently for new orders.

Bushido: The Soul of Japan
Inazo Nitobe, 1899.

 Warrior Race: A History of the British at War
Lawrence James
Little, Brown & Co., 2001.

The recent release of The Northman, along with my reading of two fascinating books, Bushido: The Soul of Japan and Warrior Race: A History of the British At War, has prompted me to share some thoughts on the nature and trajectory of Western warrior culture and its place in the West today. The Japanese concept and path of Bushido (“the way of the warrior”) is a useful tool for examining Western warrior culture because it is perhaps the only such system outside the West that offers some striking similarities. And yet there are also enough differences between Bushido and the history of the Western warrior to bring into sharp relief those qualities that make the European experience unique. In the following essay I want to offer something between a book review and a contemporary social commentary. It should be obvious that at the heart of the problem of the West is a failure to participate in the basics of life: to reproduce, and to compete with other groups. Competition in modernity has been reduced to a mostly economic exercise, accompanied by sports only insofar as those sports serve the goal of hypnotic mass entertainment and provide an impotent outlet for the universal instinct towards tribalism and conflict. The classic motifs of the way of the warrior  (disdain for death, quest for individual glory, and the building of a morality around concepts of honor rather than simple “fairness” or “equality”) have today either been sublimated to the point of becoming almost invisible, or have vanished entirely. Whence the Western bushido?

Honor and Death 

Perhaps the best content found in Lawrence James’s Warrior Race concerns the culture of the ancient Celtic Britons, and that of the Roman and Germanic invaders they came into conflict with. Common among all three, though more pronounced among the Celts and Germans, was the individual quest for honor and prestige. James writes that “personal honour, pride in his unit and reverence for his commanders and the state they served motivated the Roman soldier.”^[1] Among the Celts meanwhile, were “professional warriors attached to tribal rulers. Their fighting methods were Homeric, with each man deliberately seeking to prove his audacity and prowess in the manner of a champion.”^[2]

Warrior bands were united by shared pride in courage, and by loyalty to a noble lord. James comments that

If [a warrior band] leader was slain, his followers would fight on to the death. For the Romans, such behavior was another example of barbarian madness, but within the Germanic and Celtic traditions it was a mark of the highest distinction. And it long remained so. A fifth-century Roman was puzzled by the fact that among the Alani ‘a man is judged happy who sacrificed his life in battle.’ Six hundred years later, the gravestone of a Scandinavian warrior proclaimed: ‘He did not return at Uppsala, but fought while he could hold weapons.’^[3]

The uniqueness of the Western warrior’s contempt for death is thrown into even sharper relief when considered alongside Japanese accounts. In Nitobe’s Bushido, it is remarked that the samurai warriors of feudal Japan possessed a “stoic composure in sight of danger or calamity, that disdain of life and friendliness with death.” This disdain of life, however, did not manifest in the ‘Homeric’ quality in battle alluded to by James. Nitobe adds that the Japanese warrior was not seen to “run all kinds of hazards, to jeopardize one’s self, to rush into the jaws of death.” The modern manifestation of the kamikaze is probably the closest Japanese behavior to the European example, but even here it is too goal-orientated, and rooted too heavily in shame-avoidance (suicide attacks being more effective in attacking warships than conventional attacks), to compare with the assertive seeking of death and honor found among the Europeans.

There is a calculated aspect to the Japanese warrior that is much less evident among the classic European ‘berserker’ type. James points out that “Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Pictish, and Irish warriors held similar values, followed similar codes of conduct, admired the same qualities, and shared a common pride in their calling.” Personal honor and reputation were primary, since “it gave the warrior status in his lifetime and renown after death, for his exploits would be relived by the versifiers and minstrels who entertained fighting men as they ate and drank in their lord’s hall.” Disdain for death was assisted among all the Northwest European tribes by the common practice of entering an animalistic and predatory state. The Irish called this process riastarthe, which may be rendered as ‘battle fury,’ and in the annals concerning the Irish hero Cuchulain some literary license was employed in explaining how its onset was accompanied by a terrifying physical transformation:

You would have thought that every hair was driven into his head. You would have thought that a spark of fire was on every hair. He closed one eye until it was no wider than the eye of a needle; he opened the other until it was as big as a wooden bowl. He bared his teeth from jaw to ear, and he opened his mouth until the gullet was visible.

Germanic fighting men, who raised themselves to a similar battle fury, became ‘berserk’ (bear-like) or ‘as mad as dogs or wolves; they bit their shields and were as strong as bears.” James suggests that

vulpine characteristics were particularly cherished, for wolves hunted in packs and their savagery was proverbial. Warriors clad in wolves’ skins absorbed that beast’s ferocity. They are described in the ninth-century Norse poem Raven Song: ‘Wolfcoats they are called, those who bear blood-stained swords to battle; they redden spears when they come to the slaughter, acting together.’

One of the remarkable features of the history of British warfare is the long persistence of such traits in the population. James argues that the knights of the middle ages were, after all, “direct descendants of Germanic and Celtic super-warriors.” An excellent case in point is the English lord Sir Giles D’Argentine, who distinguished himself against Scottish forces at the Battle of Bannockburn (1314):

At Bannockburn, when the tide turned against the English, Sir Giles scorned to join the general retreat. Instead, he spurred his horse straight into the ranks of the Scottish spearmen shouting his war cry ‘Argente!’ and was killed. Those of his enemies qualified to judge on arcane chivalric matters rated him ‘the third best knight of that day.’

Even into the nineteenth century, it was believed that the aristocracy could not rely on lineage alone to prove their elite status, but rather should demonstrate it by deeds, especially those involving military courage. In 1855, during the Crimean War, Viscount Palmerston addressed Parliament after news emerged of a heroic charge:

Talk to me of the aristocracy of England! Why, look at that glorious charge of cavalry at Balaklava — look to that charge, where the noblest and wealthiest of the land rode foremost, followed by heroic men from the lowest classes of the community, each rivalling the other in bravery.

A French officer observing another British attack on Russian lines was “astonished by the cold, drill-book manner in which the British moved forward.”^[4]

Perhaps the most remarkable example of the persistence of the link between death and honor, found in Warrior Race, concerns an 1803 dispute between Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Montgomery, Household Cavalry, and Captain James Macnamara, Royal Navy. Both were walking their dogs in London’s Hyde Park when the dogs began fighting. Montgomery’s dog was badly wounded, and Montgomery demanded that Macnamara call off his dog or “I’ll knock it down.” Macnamara retorted that such language and conduct was not befitting a gentleman. This was a serious charge, and resulted in the declaration of a duel. The following morning the men met at a secluded part of Chalk Farm were they fired upon one another with pistols. Montgomery was fatally wounded. Three weeks later Macnamara appeared in court charged with manslaughter but defended his actions on the grounds that his role as leader in the Navy demanded that he maintain integrity of dignity and character, and defend his personal honor. He told the court, “It is impossible to define in terms, the proper feelings of a Gentleman; but their existence has supported this happy country for many ages, and she might perish if they were lost.” Macnamara was acquitted and eleven years later he was promoted to rear-admiral. James comments:

By deliberately facing death in a nonchalant manner, the duellist proved his capacity to suppress that most deeply implanted of all human impulses: the urge for self-preservation. If he surrendered to his animal reflexes or his reason, he would simply run away and reveal himself a coward. Cravenness was inexcusable in a gentleman and automatically disbarred him from the company of his equals.

The Fluid Hierarchy

Western social structures and class barriers were more fluid than those among other peoples, and is another difference between the Western warrior culture and the Japanese bushido who followed a rigid hereditary samurai class. Western warrior culture very often rewarded individual heroism with social promotion and the granting of lands, and the long tradition of piracy and battle-looting, which stretched back to the times of the Saxons and Vikings, persisted well into the nineteenth century. James describes how

Some years ago, a member of a Scottish landowning family told me how her ancestor, one of several sons of a crofter, had been taken by his father to enlist in a Highland regiment at Inverness. There was no alternative, for the family land could only support his eldest brother. The young man in question was literate and was promoted quickly, for the could attend to the orderly book, and the high wastage of officers in the Crimea secured him a commission. He served in the army that relieved Lucknow in 1857 and ruthless looting gained him sufficient cash to return home and purchase an estate.

James refers to the long history of such social fluidity, pointing out that

Early modern British society was hierarchical but fluid. A man acquired the public status of gentleman when he secured the symbol of knighthood, a coat of arms. In Elizabethan England and afterwards, they were freely available to anyone who would pay the herald’s fees and convince them that they lived either by their intelligence, if they were lawyers, or had acquired land, if they were merchants or, for that matter, a playwright property-owner like Shakespeare.

Religion 

For the samurai, bushido was informed by both Zen Buddhism and Shinto. Nitobe comments that the former inculcated a “calm trust in Fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable,” while Shinto encouraged loyalty to the sovereign and for ancestral memory. Pre-Christian religious influences on Western warrior culture are evident in the transformative, animalistic battle rituals of the ancient Celts and Germanics. It is worth pointing out that Christianity did very little to dull the edge of Western warrior culture, and in fact complimented it very well. As indicated in the early ninth century Saxon poem Heliand, Jesus Christ was embraced as an ideal warrior king who had arrived on Earth as the Ruler’s son, gathered about him a loyal band of men, and, as the “Might-Wielding Christ” had embraced a heroic end in battle against Satan and Death and will one day return upon a white horse to “judge and make war.” Lawrence James stresses that

Superficially at least, the Christian faith condemned all violence, but there were significant exceptions which together added up to the canonical concept of the just war. St Augustine of Hippo argued that force could be used in defence of the weak, to chastise rebels and oath breakers and, of course, against heretics and pagans. … There was little here that would have disturbed the conscience of an early medieval king who, ostensibly, only went to war to protect his otherwise defenceless subjects from aggression or to suppress rebellions. Furthermore, the church respected the calling of the warrior, the more so if he used his arms in pursuit of aims of which it approved.

The Present Day 

What remnants of Western warrior culture exist today? Not many. Ted Kaczynski’s concept of “surrogate activities” is appropriate for a wide range of phenomena in the modern West, and involves an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward, merely for the sake of the “fulfillment” that they get from pursuing the goal. Kevin MacDonald has written, referring also to Ricardo Duchesne’s The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, that extreme sports are “a context of implicit Whiteness.” MacDonald writes

In this analysis, White men jumping off buildings and sky surfing are reenacting a fundamental script of Western culture—the same script that underlies Western energy, inventiveness, exploration and creativity. While I argue that this berserker military ethos of daring and adventure is not the whole story of Western individualism (there are also the morally constructed egalitarian ingroups that feed into today’s stifling political correctness; see here, p. 23ff),  I think Duchesne has a key insight that explains the psychology of a great many White men and is likely a critically important aspect of the evolutionary psychology of the West.

Such activities are impressive, and are certainly a way to “make ones name” in modernity. But they are also fundamentally without meaning or lasting legacy. For this reason, MacDonald expressed the hope that “such men develop an explicit sense of their White identity and interests and that they redirect their sense of physical daring and adventure to lead their people in the struggles that lie ahead.”

Another layer to “surrogate activities” is that key instincts are “outsourced” into entertainment forms and petty clannishness. This is especially obvious in the sporting world, where the instinct towards tribalism and conflict is directed into spectacles that are ultimately without meaning. Watch a European soccer game and you will very like hear rhythmic mass chants and clapping that are reminiscent of what once could have boomed over an ancient battlefield. In Europe, until recent times, soccer matches would be accompanied, both before and after the game, by mindless and meaningless running street battles between one faction of fans and another. One of the fastest rising sports in the last 15 years is mixed martial arts (MMA), in which men fight in a cage under a relatively loose set of rules (in the original Ultimate Fighting Championship there were hardly any rules at all). One positive effect of this has been a boom in martial arts training among White males, and Whites remain dominant as trainers and instructors.

Coupled with superhero movies and action films of all kinds, however, violence is now primarily something that entertains, rather than something that informs ones view of life and death. Lawrence James closes his history by discussing modern British office workers fighting with paint guns in forests as corporate “team-building exercises,” and the trend for those seeking some kind of personal fulfilment to undergo training programs devised by the Special Air Service. The warrior-aristocratic ethos of violence and conflict that lay at the heart of chivalry and blended with Christian ideals of social responsibility and Renaissance notions of virtue has largely disappeared from the culture of the West. It has been replaced with commercialism, crudity, vulgarity, and overwhelming cowardice.

The social structure of the West remains fluid, but the warrior and gentleman is no longer present in the hierarchy. He has been ousted by the oligarch, the technocrat, the merchant, and the career politician. The military elite is now nothing more than a tool of these forces, rather than a directing force in its own right. Long gone are the days when European heads of state led their troops into battle, earning their right to lead through courage and daring. Although aristocratic dominance of the armed forces in Britain persisted until well into the 19th century, the total wars of the twentieth century “democratized” and watered down the nature of warfare, reducing war to a calculation of numbers and technology in a manner that continues to this day. Where is the warrior in the age of the drone and the intercontinental ballistic missile?

Religion has also collapsed as a support of the European warrior ethos. Long-gone in the West is any hint of the “Might-Wielding Christ.” Today Christianity has been largely reduced to a foot-kissing immigration-assistance network. Look at any mainstream church and you’ll hear plenty about being meek and humble, and nothing about treading down one’s enemies like a winepress (Rev. 19:15). The result is that Christianity will undergo a shift in which less liberal, and more masculine, males gravitate towards very small enclaves of ultra-traditional Catholicism or Orthodoxy where asceticism and older visions of Christ prevail, while mainstream churches become more and more female-dominated. 

Writing at the end of the nineteenth century, Inazo Nitobe lamented the gradual decline of bushido in Japan, but remained hopeful that remnants of it would somehow persist:

Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive the ruins.

I wonder, if Nitobe observed Japan today, whether he would agree that bushido has survived the ruins. For my part, I find myself surveying the ruins of Western culture, and finding only debris.

^[1] James, Warrior Race, 8.

^[2] James, Warrior Race, 11.

^[3] Ibid, 31.

^[4] James, Warrior Race, 322.

Anyone who is perceptive of current social and political trends in America knows that women — especially White liberal women — play an inordinate role. They are almost always at the forefront of any protest lecturing others about ‘systemic racism,’ ‘white privilege,’ ‘toxic masculinity,’ and the need for ‘equity’ in every sphere of life.

These same women are given every conceivable platform to spew their revolutionary rhetoric. They demand to be heard, and they haven’t the slightest hesitancy to confront and shout down their opponents. The prevailing attitude among them best fits the popular quote attributed to the late Harvard professor, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who wrote in 1976 that “well-behaved women seldom make history.” This was apparently taken out of its context and given the new meaning that if women are to make an impact on society for good, they must rebel against the norm and be disruptive. The notion of a woman who is gracious and well-mannered as she protests is anathema to the thinking of most contemporary liberal female activists.

All of this, of course, is not a recent phenomenon. It has its roots in the women’s suffrage movement beginning in the nineteenth century and increasing in influence ever since. The most notable modern feminists were Jews such as Betty Friedan, Naomi Klein, Gloria Steinem, and the late Supreme Court judge, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, can be named among them. In fairness, there are plenty of gentile women who have also played a significant role in feminist history. Yet it would be hard to deny that Jewish feminists have played a more influential and disproportionate one. I suspect this is due in large part to Jews controlling news corporations, print media, Hollywood, and much of academia.

Feminist women have always created scenes for their cause. They have always engaged in public antics. They have always been vocal and confrontational. What we are witnessing today, then, is not necessarily new, but it is different in its degree and scope.

The contemporary feminist woman of today is not just passionate about what she believes, she is uber-passionate about it. She’s not just a believer, she’s a fanatic. She’s not just on a mission, she sees herself as a revolutionary bent on transforming the world. She cannot be reasoned with. She’s not just ready to argue, but ready also to brawl. She doesn’t just lecture, she screams her message  at others. She demands that you listen to her, and if you don’t, she’ll force you to listen. She invades public spaces demanding to be heard.

The modern ‘woke’ feminist is consumed with her own self-righteousness. She is obsessed with virtue signaling before others. She hasn’t the faintest doubt about the rightness of her cause. And anyone who opposes her or even tries to temper her opinions is no different than the most deplorable humans we could imagine. Restraint and moderation aren’t permitted among today’s feminists. Like the most rabid religious fundamentalist, there is no reasoning with them. It is an all or nothing proposition.

The new and hard-core feminists of today are not limited to a few cranks who are childless and have never been married. A good many of these women, instead, are married and have children. They are part of mainstream society. Other than the ‘pussy hats’ they might wear to some rallies, they wouldn’t necessarily stand out all that much from ‘normie’ women.

Nevertheless, leftist women have a number of differences, as revealed by a recent U.K. survey.

• The most popular LGBT identity is bisexual, which is significantly more common among women than men.
• When we look at homosexual behavior, we find that it has grown much less rapidly than LGBT identification. Men and women under 30 who reported a sexual partner in the last five years dropped from around 96% exclusively heterosexual in the 1990s to 92% exclusively heterosexual in 2021. Whereas in 2008 attitudes and behavior were similar, by 2021 LGBT identification was running at twice the rate of LGBT sexual behavior.
• 
• The author provides a high-point estimate of an 11-point increase in LGBT identity between 2008 and 2021 among Americans under 30. Of that, around 4 points can be explained by an increase in same-sex behavior. The majority of the increase in LGBT identity can be traced to how those who only engage in heterosexual behavior describe themselves.
• Very liberal ideology is associated with identifying as LGBT among those with heterosexual behavior, especially women. It seems that an underlying psychological disposition is inclining people with heterosexual behavior to identify both as LGBT and very liberal. The most liberal respondents have moved from 10-15% non-heterosexual identification in 2016 to 33% in 2021. Other ideological groups are more stable.
• 
• 
• 
• Very liberal ideology and LGBT identification are associated with anxiety and depression in young people. Very liberal young Americans are twice as likely as others to experience these problems. 27% of young Americans with anxiety or depression were LGBT in 2021. This relationship appears to have strengthened since 2010.
• 
• Among young people, mental health problems, liberal ideology, and LGBT identity are strongly correlated. Using factor analysis in two different studies shows that assuming one common variable between all three traits explains 40-50% of the variation.
• 
• Because the rise in LGBT identity is so heavily concentrated on the political left, its influence on the balance of power between the two parties is likely to be limited.
• College students majoring in the social sciences and humanities are about 10 points more LGBT than those in STEM. Meanwhile, 52% of students taking highly political majors such as race or gender studies identify as LGBT, compared to 25% among students overall.
• Various data sources indicate that gender nonconformity – trans and non-binary identity – reached its peak in the last few years and has started to decline.
• Overall, the data suggest that while there has been an increase in same-sex behavior in recent years, sociopolitical factors likely explain most of the rise in LGBT identity.

Yet this is where the potential of their destructive message and influence could be greater than feminists of previous generations. They may not necessarily look like the traditional feminist with their short, cropped hair, tattoos, piercings, blue hair, and the like (there are plenty of modern feminists, admittedly, who still appear as I have described). Instead, they physically appear to be no different than every other adult woman. This gives the feminist message of today a less threatening appearance and, thereby, more acceptable to the gullible women who might entertain such notions.

The question naturally arises why women are so seemingly susceptible to such radical social and political movements? Why do women so often comprise the shock troops and first ranks of any Leftist political protest?

I think there are reasons for this, none of which are accidental.

The first reason lies in a woman’s nature. Women are nurturers. They are disposed to care for, treat and help others. They are natural do-gooders. They have an innate pull to help and ease the suffering of the less fortunate. Their inclination is to make things better. They are helpers at heart. These are not necessarily bad qualities, but they must be kept in check lest it morph into the kind of militant ‘woke’ women who have taken hold in our society.

The collective insanity of our women is perhaps no more perfectly illustrated in the massive numbers of American women who are rabidly pro-abortion. If women do indeed possess nurturing qualities when it comes to babies and children, why are so many of them willing to terminate their pregnancies — even to the point of supporting partial-birth and after-birth abortions?

These same women must literally suppress their most natural instincts in order to support abortion. Spiraling to this level of evil doesn’t occur overnight. No, it occurs incrementally until one completely sears and deadens their moral conscience. What accounts for this other than a nationwide mass delusion of our women? What sort of wickedness has crept into their hearts and minds for them to celebrate laws that permit the deaths of millions of unborn and partially born babies?

The second reason lies in the emotional nature of women. They tend to think from the heart and not so much from the head. Women, generally, tend to be less critical and cautious in their thinking than men. They are often reactionary, and their heartstrings can be more easily pulled than their male counterparts.

Obviously, there are exceptions to what I’m saying. There are plenty of women who are careful thinkers and who are not as easily manipulated emotionally as other women. But in my estimation these kinds of women are the exception and not the norm. They are the outliers. I don’t even think it comes natural to them. They must fight against their more trusting and emotional natures in some way.

Bear in mind that I’m not saying that men are completely free of emotionalism and less critically minded in the way women generally are. There are plenty of men who can be just as irrational at times and emotionally driven. But overall males tend to be different in this realm than females. Men are not so easily emotionally manipulated as women, and in this sense the two sexes really are different from each other.

It should surprise no one, then, why religious charlatans and radical Marxist groups have so easily preyed on females. They too understand the nature of females, and they exploit it for all it’s worth. Most churches are filled with women, and they often lead the various committees and church ministries. Even cosmetic manufacturers target women in their advertisements in ways that comport with the nature and unique proclivities of females.

They know good-and-well that most women are gullible and can be easily manipulated. They would never admit it, of course, but they would not have had the same level of marketing success if these fundamental distinctions were not kept in mind.

Go to any Leftist protest, and you will witness crowds of angry women with posters and picket signs on behalf of their political cause. The sheer numerical dominance of female protesters, in fact, often serves as the impetus for some men to join the cause so they can have easy access to all the women. The point being that women are the ‘weaker sex’ and not just physically, but emotionally and in terms of critical awareness.

I would add that the presence of large numbers of women at Marxist and feminist political rallies serves also to disarm any political opponents who may be in attendance. Who would, after all, like to be surrounded by throngs of hostile and screeching women? Any male who sought to engage them would be drowned out with a barrage of epithets and the vilest profanity. Today’s loud-mouthed ‘pussy hats’ are not ashamed to say what they really think. Even if a melee broke out, what man would want to be filmed fighting a woman? Women, then, are used by Leftist activist groups to intimidate and demoralize any male opposition that might be present.

The third reason lies in what women are told about themselves by those who control the messaging. Women in America are told they can do anything a man can, and even better too. Women are portrayed in the media, television and Hollywood as practically super-heroes. These are lies, of course, but we’re not allowed to say so. Expect consequences if you do.

Turn on any television commercial and the woman is always portrayed as smarter and more quick-witted than any man. Males are portrayed as clueless and dull-minded. Whether it’s working as a police officer or in combat infantry, females can do it all. There are no intellectual or physical barriers, and anyone who suggests there might be is a backward patriarchal fool.

Anyone who appeals to the physical limitations of women compared to men in the realm of sports, is immediately denounced. No amount of reality and facts will persuade the feminist mindset.

For example, during a CBS This Morning interview, the once great professional tennis player (now retired), John McEnroe, tried to talk some sense into host Gail King when he stated in a 2017 NPR interview that if Serena Williams “played the men’s circuit she’d be like 700 in the world.” She wouldn’t accept it even though McEnroe admitted that Serena was “the greatest female tennis player that ever lived.” Gail wanted so badly for McEnroe to say that Serena was the greatest tennis player among both men and women. To his credit, he wouldn’t say it because it wasn’t true.

At one point, McEnroe was asked by one of Gail’s co-hosts, “Would you like to apologize?” Thankfully, he refused to cave to such pressure. Yet it serves to illustrate that fundamental and biological differences between men and women, including differences in physical abilities, cannot be admitted even when the facts are readily available.

Also, why must people apologize for an opinion they have, especially if it is sincerely held and can be proven? The question reveals more about the mindset of the person asking for the apology than the opinion of McEnroe.

The reality of innate male and female differences and their physical abilities should be patently obvious to anyone, but is now denied so as not to arouse the displeasure of today’s feminists. We must pretend that men and women are the same. We must deny what our lying eyes see and what we instinctively know.

Any man who dares to publicly challenge the reality-denying worldview of ‘woke’ feminism will soon find himself de-platformed and likely unemployed. A voice free to express itself, personal dignity, and even employment cannot be given to society’s ‘heretics.’ The very things that feminists demand and force upon society they quickly deny to anyone who challenges their dogma. It only serves to prove just how disingenuous and intellectually dishonest they are at their core.

The fourth reason lies in the breakdown of the family and society. Feminism did not arise in a vacuum. There were an array of historical events and influences that contributed to its development. Like most misguided political movements, especially those that had strong Jewish and Marxist influences, it was just a matter of time before what seemed like a well-intentioned movement for ‘equality’ turned into a nation destroying agenda led largely by crazed women bent on imposing their Utopian values on the rest of us.

It has been said that when even the women of any society become as debased as the men of that same society, you can rest assured that its days are numbered. Surely America’s days are numbered if one considers how far too many of our women conduct themselves, especially when given a platform. Just look at how they dress. You can’t go to any store or public event without seeing an enormous ham-beast wallowing about attired in the tightest and most revealing clothes imaginable. Jiggles and cellulite for all to see. Tatted sleeves on every arm. Pierced like an African tribesmen, and a foul mouth to boot. She has no sense of shame. No self-awareness. God help the man who’d dare to suggest that she’s not the Greek goddess she imagines herself to be!

There is nothing gracious or even feminine about them. Nothing that could be deemed dignified or classy. They are not soft-spoken nor reasonable — the very qualities that might attract more men to their cause!

This is what our American women have morphed into. This is what ‘woke’ feminism does to the women of any society stupid enough to tolerate it. Is it any wonder why so many American men are turning to Asian and Eastern European women who possess the slimness, femininity, grace, and traditional values they want?

Our women, in truth, have abandoned the natural order of things. They are in complete rebellion, but they are too brainwashed and self-righteous to see it. At least two generations of American women have been duped into believing that causal sex, abortion, and climbing the corporate ladder will bring them happiness. A good many of them have discovered it doesn’t. They are now in their late 30s and 40s, and they want to get married and have children. But for most of them, it’s too late.

Some of them have only recently discovered what they were intended to be all along — namely, mothers and homemakers. Instead of saving themselves sexually for their husbands, partnering with those same husbands, and rearing responsible children possessing real values and character, they opted for a corporate career with no husband and no children. They spent their best years pursuing a worthless college degree (at least in most cases) and partying. Having hit the wall by the time they reached thirty, and having gone through multiple sexual partners, there remains few marriageable men and those who are single may not necessarily want a woman who has a host of bed notches to her name.

The fifth reason is because men have largely abdicated their role as leaders in the home, church, and society. Women have rebelled against the natural order of things, no doubt, but men have also allowed it to happen. They have remained content to do nothing about it. They have become passive. Some of these same men have aligned with feminists in order to have access to them and to gain their approval. Other men have done it because like so many feminists they too have a need to virtue-signal.

When our men refuse to take their leadership roles in society, there will arise plenty of women who will be glad to do it for them. And this is where the problems begin.

Far too many men do not have their lives together. They have no framework or worldview in which to interpret the society around them. They have not developed a practical philosophy of marriage and child-rearing. Most men do not even think in such terms. It’s completely foreign to them. Their fathers never taught nor modeled before them how a husband and father is to conduct himself. There is a complete absence on the part of these same fathers of imparting values and practical wisdom to their sons. They either haven’t considered it or don’t think it’s important to do so. Their own fathers may have never addressed such subjects. And so whatever knowledge is gained by our young men is almost always based on a liberal and materialistic worldview — which will always prove detrimental to the lives and future of Whites.

I know this will be difficult for many to accept, but the dominance of women in almost every realm of our society is not a good indicator of our national health. When women and transexuals are promoted to important and even strategic positions within our military, this is not a good sign. It certainly signals to our enemies that we are weak, that we are driven more by popular ‘woke’ rhetoric and artificial constructs than by the safety of our countrymen. Any nation, such as the U.S., that exalts and virtually deifies women sets itself on a course that will surely collapse under the weight of its own stupidity. This is not to say that honorable and virtuous women should not be honored by society, but only that national and social policies should not be determined by what women ‘feel’ nor by any false or inflated views of what they can do.

In other words, when women rule a nation’s most important institutions — especially if its foundation are ideologically ‘woke’ — it will inevitably self-destruct. Consider, for example, Germany’s former Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the problems she saddled her nation with because of her bleeding heart for Islamic migrants. In Sweden, 47% of its Riksdag (parliament) is comprised of women. Switzerland’s Federal Assembly has 41.5% females. It should surprise no one that these same countries also have extremely liberal social policies and permit large numbers of Islamic people to immigrate.

While there may be some historical exceptions to what I have written, the point remains: Women in national leadership roles generally tend to weaken a nation because of their sympathetic natures, their susceptibility to social contagion, and poor discernment.

The same thing could be said about the presence of women in the police profession. Although women do well in support roles (e.g., dispatchers), they do not have the natural physical traits and upper body strength that’s required to do the job. Most male cops will admit this, albeit privately. Is it any wonder why so many female officers are injured in the course of their duties? Most male felons will comply with a female officer only when she’s accompanied by stronger male officers.

When women are given endless platforms to spew the sappiest political drivel, including the most nation-destroying social ideas, and then celebrated for it, this too is not a good thing. It is a sign that we are done with as a nation since only a people bent on national suicide would permit it. And it’s not because there aren’t any intelligent and perceptive women because there surely are. But when a society tolerates only one viewpoint — a liberal feminist one — there is little hope that that same society will turn out wiser and stronger in the end.

The old 1968 Virginia Slims cigarette TV commercial used to say, “You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby” — but for great numbers of American women, it’s been a self-imposed disaster for themselves and the nation at every step.